dinosaur kid

I’ve been thinking about doing a statistics post for a while — not because I have anything really interesting to share, but because I value transparency and’d like to see more webcomics being upfront about their numbers. Some of these’re fun and some of these’re bummers, but I’ll try not to be bitter here.

Strips per character: How many times has each character been in a strip? Well, out of 164 total, it goes like this: dinosaur kid (105), octopus kid (85), skunk kid (72), turtle kid (63). That also happens to be the order in which the characters were created. Actually, I worried all year that skunk kid would have the fewest, and may’ve overcompensated at turtle kid’s expense. But he’ll be alright. Also of note: egg baby appears in 7 strips, gorilla teacher appears in just 5, and 22 of the strips are big Sunday pages.

Views: 6,015 total views, 1,152 in the busiest month (May 2017), 201 on the busiest day (29 April 2017). Through all of 2017, I had an average of 15 daily pageviews. So far in 2018, the daily average is 28. At any time, this could be one person reading multiple strips or multiple people seeing one and leaving. Anecdotally, I have the impression that my only consistent readers are a handful of friends and family.

Promotion: I advertise for about 50 cents a day via Project Wonderful* and use social media (Twitter) sparingly. I have a handful of actual followers on the latter, but it hasn’t helped me make any friends in the comics community. In 2017, I also tabled three conventions and made a handful of Reddit posts sharing my strips. Neither endeavor led to a noticeable increase in views. At this point, I’ve mostly talked myself out of that stuff because (1) it’s expensive (in the case of conventions), (2) it’s time-consuming, and (3) it’s discouraging when it doesn’t work. I already spend 20+ hours a week making the comic, which is the fun part, and I don’t want to spend any more time bashing my head against a wall with the unfun stuff.

Comments: 111 total, although I’m sure 20+ are me. They make me feel pretty good, insofar as they represent extra engagement with the work I’m doing. The top commenter, hands down, has been Lily, a friend I taught with back in China.

Plans: What’s next for the strip? Possibly a book deal with a small publisher looking for more all-ages material. Even if that doesn’t pan out, I’ve just about outproduced the strip’s first run, and I’m gonna keep going for now. Three times a week, every seventh a Sunday, as before. I’m proud of that, at least. I made 160+ strips in a year, and I even like some of them. That’s a cool thing.

So thanks for being a reader. Writing this post helped me realize a couple of things, including that I’d never posted comic #131 last December. Nobody brought it to my attention, but I’ve now caught the mistake and uploaded that strip.

Anyway, thanks for enjoying dinosaur kid.

*EDIT: And now, come August 2018, Project Wonderful is shutting down.